Diigo

= UNDER CONSTRUCTION! =

The proliferation of Web 2.0 tools on the web offers numerous ways of collaborating with students and colleagues. One of the most exciting and valuable tools I have seen recently is Diigo, especially with the introduction of Diigo for Educator accounts. Diigo is a social bookmarking site similar to Delicious but with more features that are beneficial for the classroom. If you are unfamiliar with social bookmarking, let me explain. When you sit at a computer, you can find a web site you really like and bookmark it or add it to your favorites so you can go back to it in the future. The problem with bookmarking on a computer is that in order to get back to that bookmark, you have to be on THAT SPECIFIC computer. If you bookmarked the site at school, when you go home it doesn’t appear on your list. If you bookmark it on one computer in the lab, you must bookmark it on every computer in the lab in order to have access to it. So, the first great thing about Diigo is that your bookmarks follow you wherever you go. When you bookmark a site using your Diigo account, you can have access to it at work, home, the computer lab or library. The other great thing is that once you bookmark it, you can share your book mark links with students and colleagues and they can all have access to your sites. The next big plus to Diigo is that you get to “tag” the sites you want to bookmark. A tag is the classification system you determine so you can organize your bookmarks and find the link the next time you need it; this is known as a folksonomy. For example, you can tag all of the sites that are helpful to students about geometry, and then the websites for data analysis or the bookmarks for the unit on Greek mythology. The great thing is that you can share your Diigo bookmark list with your students, and they can click on the Greek Mythology tag and see all of the resource for the unit. But, now let’s get to the “social” part of social bookmarking. Let’s say you find a really awesome site for your unit on Greek Mythology, and you tag it on Diigo. You see when you look at your bookmark list that 72 other people have tagged that exact same site. You can see the lists of the other people who have tagged that site, and you might discover a 6th grade teacher in Wisconsin who has an amazing list of Greek mythology sites that you didn’t even know about. Now you have taken advantage of the social part of the bookmarking process by adding some of those bookmarks to your list. But wait, there’s more. One of my favorite features of Diigo and what separates it apart from Delicious for me is the ability to highlight and add sticky notes. That’s right, I can highlight the key parts of a web page or article and add sticky notes. Every time I come back to that page, when I am logged into Diigo, I will see my highlights and sticky notes. One of the goals as educators is that we must help students learn to read effectively on the web and give them the tools to be successful. Diigo is one of those tools. One of the strategies that we have used in the District from Project CRISS training is //Selective Underlining/Highlighting// and //Sticky Note Discussions//. Using these strategies, we give students a hardcopy of the article and provide them with highlighter pens and sticky notes. We can now accomplish all of these tasks online with Diigo. We know that many students do not know how to highlight effectively. Many students highlight everything. We can teach them strategies how to selectively highlight by modeling aloud how we read a paragraph and select the key words and phrases to highlight. We can have them use the sticky notes to list main ideas, details, and key points they want to remember. Students could then be given a passage or article to practice with and then share what they have highlighted with a partner using the Diigo sharing capability and discuss why they highlighted certain parts and made certain notes. The teacher could also use Diigo and highlight information from a web page or article and put sticky notes throughout the document. On the sticky note the teacher could ask questions and Diigo allows people to comment and reply to the questions on the sticky note. Students could also add sticky notes for other students to comment on as well. Another way to use the highlighting tool is that students could go through an article and highlight all of the vocabulary that they didn’t know and learn what it means prior to reading the article. Or students could put sticky notes about questions they have when reading the text. Again, it would be important for the teacher to model the thinking that goes on in their head when they read and how to use the Diigo tools to capture this reflective reading. Finally, I heard about a teacher who is planning to use Diigo to have students use the highlight and sticky note comments to peer edit student writing done in Google Docs. Now that you have heard about the educational features of Diigo you will want to know the features of the educator account. One of the best things about the educator accounts is that you can create the student accounts, and students do not need to provide an e-mail address. Another nice feature in Diigo is that you can upload an Excel spreadsheet in .csv format with student names, usernames and passwords, and the accounts are created in an instant. Student accounts are placed in a private class, and all of the students are considered “friends” and can share bookmarks, sticky notes and group forums automatically. Student profiles are only viewable by the teacher and other students in the group, so their exposure is limited. To create a Diigo account, go to __ [| www.diigo.com] __. Once you create a Diigo account, you can apply for an Educator Upgrade at __ [| http://www.diigo.com/education] __ - please note that it can take up to 48 hours to verify that you are an educator and create the account**. Be sure that you use your Amphi.com account when you create the Diigo account** as Diigo knows that we are an educational institution. Once you have an account, your Tech Specialist can download the Diigo Toolbar to your computer. You will see the Diigo toolbar once you log into Diigo. Or you and your students can use the Diigolet when you use computers that do not allow for software to be downloaded. Diigolet is a great tool to show students when they use computers at the public library or other computers that are locked down. Diigolet does not have as many features as the Diigo toolbar, but allows you to use the major functions. Once you have your Educator Upgrade, you can pull to Teacher Console and begin creating groups and adding student accounts. Once in your group, you can add forums and bookmarks and get your students collaborating as they read and research.

Diigo provides a 21st century collaborative learning tool that students can use to process, organize, analyze, evaluate and share information. Try it out with your students today. Diigo - [| www.diigo.com] - is another popular free bookmarking tool. However, it is more than just bookmarking, and is described as a powerful research tool. Here you don't just bookmark tools, you can highlight them and annotate them, and it is one can create groups to pool research about a project.

D igest of **I**nternet **I**nformation, **G**roups, and **O**ther stuff

better ways to process, manage share and share information

focuses on bookmarking sharing saving highlighting sticky notes

//Unique to Diigo!// **Passive browsing:** Web pages are read-only. **Not available** **Extract highlights:** 7 Easily extract and compile all your highlights across multiple pages for a given subject. //Unique to Diigo!// **No easy way to extract data:** except to "copy and paste" individual paragraphs from different pages to a Word document. **Not available** **Interact & collaborate:** With sticky notes on specific areas of a webpage, interact with people on the very page you are reading. //Unique to Diigo!// **Isolated:** Browsing alone keeps you away from interacting with others and making new friends. //Unique to Diigo!// **Not available** //Unique to Diigo!// **Not available**
 * //Annotate while browsing//:** Browsing with "highlighter, scanner, and pen".Add and share Sticky Notes.
 * Not available** **Forward highligted & annotated pages:** Easily refer people to specific contents, possibly with sticky notes within context
 * Not available** **Tight integration with blogging:** Our "Send to Blog" and "Enhanced Linkrolls" make it effortless to move from browsing to blogging
 * Limited** Online Bookmarking **Access anywhere, anytime:** Keep all your bookmarks online and access them from anywhere, using any browser.

Diigo also allows //simultaneous bookmarking// to several other bookmarking services, as well as the local folders. **Limited access and no back-up:** "Favorites" stored on and accessible from only one PC. **Yes, but** no simultaneous bookmarking to local folders and elsewhere. **Search:** Titles, tags, highlights, notes, full-texts, and user are all searchable, in any combination - A rich advanced search syntax is also supported - find what you need in an instant! **Cannot search "My Favorites"** **No full-text search** **Set privacy on everything:** You decide what to share and what to keep private. **No Sharing:** Your bookmarks remain isolated in your local drive. **Yes** **Tagging:** A better way to organize information and find things faster. Easily pull up bookmark lists associated with multiple tags. **Folders and Sub-folders:** "Once in, hard to find". **Yes** **Archive:** Save exact copies of the pages you bookmarked, not just links. **No Archive:** Web contents of interest to you may disappear. **Not available** **Picture collection:** Collect your favorite pictures on the web into albums. **Cannot bookmark pictures.** **Not available** **Easy to re-organize and edit bookmarks:** Edit tags (rename, merge, delete) individually, or in batch; edit or delete bookmarks individually or in batch. **Re-organize is a pain** (especially for IE). No batch editing. **Limited** **"Unread" filter:** Bookmarks can be marked as "unread" for later review. **Not available** **Not available** **Import:** privacy settings, tags, and title can be changed individually in the import window before importing, or in batch on the website after importing. **Limited Import:** traditional browsers do not support tags, description, & overwrite. **Limited:** supported by 3 rd party extension. **Subscribe / Post lists:** Bookmark lists, either by tag(s), or by a specific user, or any combination, can be subscribed on the website or through RSS. RSS, 4 Linkroll & tagcloud can also be syndicated to other websites / blogs easily. **Not available** **Yes** **Cached bookmarking:** if for any reason, the bookmarking is unsuccessful, it will be cached locally, and re-submitted automatically until succeeding.

This powerful feature allows you to bookmark to Diigo even when you lose connections to Diigo servers, either because you lost internet connections or because our servers are down. //Unique to Diigo!// **Not available** **Not available** **Community:** Discover what the rest of the world has shared: find relevant / new content based on specific users, topics of interest (tags) defined & filtered by other users, hot lists, and more. Best way to leverage the collective wisdom of many! **Solo Discovery:** Find contents by yourself **Yes** Other cool features **Other cool features:**
 * Bookmark lists can be easily filtered by adding or subtracting tags and or users.
 * A fully customizable search tool that allows you to access any speciality search quickly.
 * Content selection menu makes it extremely convenient to interact with every word on a web page - highlight, search, look up - whatever you want!
 * Customizable options for various settings
 * More, waiting for your discovery! And a lot more on the way!

how can it make research faster

search users with common interests - look at groups

can view other bookmark lists - can view notes, highlights stickynoes can cut down on research

most useful pages bookmarked most often won’t waste time

highlight words, paragraphs, make comments on highlighted, can tag or bookmark to help them recall

join or create your own research group - all individuals can view the same information and write comments to one another.

sift through all the information

annotate text -

Research, share and collaborate

Two services in one Research and collaborate research tool Knowledge sharing community and social content site on the other side

A web highlighter, sticky notes, social bookmarking tool, and a social information network rolled into one.

Quickly bookmark, highlight and annotate

Highlight Mark anything interesting (with coloring options)

Annotate (sticky notes) 2 types - floating and inline sticky notes Set privacy level - private, public or groups

Add comments

Bookmarks accessible from any machine on any browser

Diigo also allows simultaneous book marking to several other bookmarking services, as well as the local folders.

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 * When conducting research, you most likely go straight to [|Google] or Wikipedia.**


 * What is Diigo?**

Diigo is a  [|social bookmarking] service, very much like [|Delicious], but, unlike Delicious, Diigo allows you to write annotations and comments directly onto web pages which are then saved along with the bookmark. This is how Diigo describes itself: > Diigo is two services in one — it is a research and collaborative research tool on the one hand, and a knowledge-sharing community and social content site on the other. > If you are new to the concept of social bookmarking and would like to find out more, then you should watch this video. Diigo is very popular among teachers because it also offers educators the ability to create accounts for a whole class and it protects the students’ privacy.

Diigo can import all of your Delicious bookmarks (including tags) and that, in addition, Diigo can also automatically update your Delicious account whenever you bookmark a site using Diigo.

It turned out that the most important factor for me was the ability to add commentary, or annotations, directly to web pages.

How do I annotate pages?
Diigo works best if you download a plugin for your browser which then allows you to bookmark and annotate web pages in an integrated manner, without the need to go to the Diigo website each time. This is what it looks like in my web browser:

Once you highlight a section of text, you can then annotate it with your own words of wisdom for yourself, as a self-reflection or research tool, or for your students or colleagues with whom you wish to share the links and annotations. If they have also signed up to Diigo, they can leave their own response comment on the page too!

Diigo lets you do more than just bookmark web pages online. For instance, if you install the Diigo toolbar, or toolbar button, you have the ability to highlight text and pictures in a variety of colors, or add sticky notes to a bookmarked page. With this feature you can annotate web pages with thoughts, ideas or additional information. All these notes are saved for the next time you access the saved bookmark, and anyone else you share the bookmark with, (students or teachers), will also see your annotations. It is a great way to focus attention on a large article.

Diigo lets you take screenshots of bookmarked pages to visually remind yourself of the page content, and archive the page so that if the content changes, or is removed, you will always have the original page that you bookmarked. Saved sites can be tagged for easy searching, organized into lists, or presented as a slideshow. Your Diigo bookmarks can be public, or private, and there are numerous options for sharing with individuals, groups or social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook.

**HOW TO USE DIIGO**

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= **[|Diigo Social Bookmarking] ** =

Diigo is a social bookmarking Website that allows you to save bookmarks and retrieve them from any computer, share bookmarks with friends, create groups, create lists, highlight, annotate and add comments to Webpages.

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Strengths

 * Free
 * Easy to set-up and use
 * Optional browser interface
 * Ability to bookmark, highlight, and annotate web pages
 * Share bookmarks, highlights, and notes across a network
 * Ability to create groups based on interests, tags, and bookmarked sites
 * Suggests websites and groups you might be interested based on your bookmarks and groups
 * Sidebar for bookmarks
 * Premium educator accounts (FREE)
 * Easy to create student accounts without email addresses
 * Classes are automatically created into groups to facilitate the sharing of information
 * Privacy features for student accounts that only allows communication between students and teachers
 * Ads are filtered to appropriate for students
 * Is compatible with del.icio.us, however, the updates are slightly delayed (a few minutes)
 * Ability to show bookmarked web pages in a slide show based on tags, groups, ect.

Weaknesses

 * Must download interface to highlight and create sticky notes
 * Must invite friends, rather then just adding them to your network. It eliminates the ability to follow someone and requires the networking to go both ways.

Opportunities

 * Network and collaborate with other classrooms and educators to share interests and knowledge
 * Tag and share resources for projects
 * Provide students with live links instead of copying and pasting or typing long URLs
 * Ability to add RSS feed to your network to see what new sites and tags other people are adding
 * Use the highlighting and annotating features to give feedback for online students projects (web pages, blogs, wikis, slideshows)
 * Since you can write directly on the website and save it, the need to print out sources greatly diminishes

Threats

 * Tags do not equal a trusted source or a good information
 * If the website changes or moves you can lose your annotations and highlights

Ideas for Use in the Classroom

 * Using the stick-note feature, a teacher can feature a website and ask students to comment on a big picture question. Each student gets to contribute their own thoughts and ideas and read those of the classmates.
 * Online research collaboration